Brady Blackburn, a rodeo bronc rider with some renown, learned everything he knows about horses and riding from his parents, Wayne and the now deceased Mari Blackburn. Brady is recovering from a fall off a bronking horse in a rodeo, the most serious of the injuries being a skull fracture which required a metal plate being inserted into his head. Including checking himself out of the hospital earlier than advised, Brady is determined to get back up onto the literal and proverb... (Full plot summary below)
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Brady Blackburn, a rodeo bronc rider with some renown, learned everything he knows about horses and riding from his parents, Wayne and the now deceased Mari Blackburn. Brady is recovering from a fall off a bronking horse in a rodeo, the most serious of the injuries being a skull fracture which required a metal plate being inserted into his head. Including checking himself out of the hospital earlier than advised, Brady is determined to get back up onto the literal and proverbial horse as quickly as possible as being a cowboy is all he knows. But deep in his heart he knows that returning to the rodeo in particular is something that is probably not in the cards without increased risks, which is eventually confirmed by his doctor who tells him that he cannot sustain another serious head injury without some major consequence. He does not even want his friends and family to treat him with kid gloves in being able to do any of those physical activities which are part and parcel for him of being a man and a cowboy. Brady has to come to some realization as to this fact and come to terms with it - which is difficult even as his best friend, former rodeo rider Lane Scott will forever be institutionalized needing around the clock medical care from a similar accident - or end up killing himself physically in the attempt to bronc again, or killing himself emotionally in not being able to do what he loves.
Leave your thoughts about The Rider.
| Flick FilosopherMaryAnn JohansonAn extraordinary semidocumentary drama, beautiful and beautifully accomplished, about dignity, work, and masculinity. Heartbreaking and yet utterly unsentimental, this is one of the best and most important films of the year. |
| The New York TimesA.O. ScottMs. Zhao’s commitment to her craft — she knows how to take care and when to take risks — matches Brady’s. She has an eye for landscape and an acute sensitivity to the nuances of storytelling, a bold, exacting vision that makes The Rider exceptional among recent American regional-realist films. |
| The PlaylistBradley WarrenFocusing on the indigenous community of the Pine Ridge reservation, Zhao reimagines the entrenched masculine persona of the cowboy. The result is an entrancing, deeply moving effort, one that is certain to steal the hearts of audiences on its wider release. |
| New StatesmanRyan GilbeyThe Rider could easily have been pitying or patronising but it is suffused instead with warmth, understanding and insightful detail |
| Washington PostAnn HornadayFilmed with widescreen grandeur on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, The Rider reinvigorates tropes from the western genre of men, horses, honor codes and vast expanses of nature with a refreshing lack of sentimentality, without sacrificing their inherent lyricism and poetry. |
| The Victoria AdvocateJoe FriarOccasionally a film comes along that captures an honest slice of American life with performances so authentic that you forget you're watching a movie. Writer-director Chloé Zhao is responsible for one of the best films of the year. |
| TheWrapRobert AbeleSpiritual and earthy, forged in curiosity yet fortified with empathy, The Rider is why we go to the cinema, and it affirms Chloe Zhao as one of the most gifted new movie artists of our time. |
| Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternThis poetic, laconic and ineffably beautiful drama has an unerring feel for its subject, a young cowboy struggling against his implacable fate in the American West. That’s notable in itself, and all the more so since the film was written and directed by Chloé Zhao, a Chinese woman born in Beijing. |
| Another GazeRebecca LiuThe beauty of Zhao's film is that it celebrates being human without veering into sentimentality. |
| Irish TimesDonald ClarkeA hugely impressive slice of prairie naturalism. |
